Description

This book is about categorization processes in native/non-native workplace interaction, within the context of internship interviews between Danish employers and second language speakers who were born abroad. In this volume, which is one of the first books on gatekeeping, Tranekjaer seeks to address processes of power and ideology from a conversation analytical perspective. The book examines the challenges that non-native internship candidates face in processes of employment when employers and job-counsellors seek to conceptualize, categorize and address the candidates' linguistic, ethnic and religious otherness. The book shows how processes of categorization are influenced by broader structures of ideology related to social issues of controversy and debate such as migration, integration and second-language learning. The book also includes an overview of previous gatekeeping studies and proposes a redefinition of the term, which suggests a broader meaning and relevance of the notion.

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About Author

Louise Tranekjaer is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Identity at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research interests include institutional interaction, membership categorization analysis, identity, processes of inclusion and exclusion and discourse analysis.

Contents

Introduction 1. The Internship Interview - A Hybrid Communicative Event 2. Gatekeeping - An Interactional and Ideological Process 3. Categories and Knowledge in Interaction 4. When Background is Foregrounded - Nationality and 'Ways of Life' 5. Do You Understand? The Issue of Language 6. Liquor, Pork and Scarfs - The Issue of Religion 7. Gatekeeping - The Power of Categories 8. Interactional Pitfalls and Pointers